Reconsidering VIM

May 26, 2010

By Developer.com Staff

A developer's IDE is her life. She choses her IDE because it does what she wants it to do when she wants it do it. One powerful editor is open sourceVIM, and Kim Schultz, the author of "Hacking Vim 7.2," has published a lengthy article of VIM customization recipes.

Arguably the most important feature of any IDE is its ability to effectively customize an IDE to the developers style.

In her article, Schulz describes how to do basic things like changing fonts, color schemes and personalized highlighting. She also delves into some more interesting customizations, such as, creating custom toolbars and toggle menus.

Like Emacs, VIM is highly customizable, but you have to be willing to get into writing your own customization scripts.